Characterization of a Novel Temperature Lidar Receiver by Means of Laboratory Rayleigh-Brillouin Scattering Measurements

A new receiver setup based on an imaging Fizeau interferometer measuring the Rayleigh Brillouin scattering (RBS) spectra to retrieve tropospheric temperature profiles is introduced. The optical layout of the proposed receiver design is discussed and its functionality is demonstrated by means of accurate and controlled laboratory RBS measurements. The proposed temperature receiver is based on a Fizeau interferometer and a 32 channel PMT array which can resolve the RBS spectrum without applying any scanning procedures. In order to avoid any incidence angle fluctuations on the Fizeau interferometer caused by for instance atmospheric turbulence, the application of a fiver coupled telescope was investigated. It is shown that a 50 µm fiber (NA=0.12) provides both, sufficient coupling efficiency and sufficiently low divergence in order to keep the Finesse of the interferometer. The performance of the novel lidar receiver is verified by means of accurate laboratory RBS measurements.